2023-10-26 A Meditation on Absolution

“5 Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. 5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” (1 Th 5:1–11 ESV)

Flatlined, down for the count: around the subject of absolution is its relevance and applicability to genuine quirks, to sincere frustrations, to manifest pain, trauma, self-loathing, acquiescence, self-inhibition. We are near to bucking broncos on one level, and to plainly needful and accepting of aid on another. The little creature who emerges, human and grateful, cautious in language but warmed to the offer: that in Christ is found the forgiveness of sins. In Christ is found a fundamental Gospel, unadorned, just that and nothing more need be said, that in Him you are a New Creation. In Him you are actually lifted from the malaise, from the concessions we make on behalf of an imagined judge. The lumps we prescribe for ourselves; the degraded perch once a perch of prophetic giftings but now flatlined; the simple vested or curtailed sense of appropriate endeavors: nothing is inappropriate in Christ, in whom all is racing to the safety zone of forgiveness. That we may know life upon life. That we may adorn and be adorned in loving ways, not simply persnickety or uptight about doing like “those people” do.

That is, our casus belli is an unhindered, unimpeded urgent brush with Strength, with Power, with Absolution. He is stronger than anything we, the big brother and “responsible” one adjudicate: we say, “Thus and no farther; all is covered by my fasting; all is a gift because of my self control”. No, that is a doctrine that falls flat, that impedes and hinders us away from plain-spoken loving zones radical and causing gaping astonishment. God is there, too. God is in the judicious decisions the warrior, the soldier, makes in times of life and death. God is the heft and the imposition of a peace-loving flag, the victor hoisting a determined, resolute Sign as to no nonsense tolerated ‘round here.

That is, Grace is so hands-off that it leads to that selfless and lone sacrifice on the hill outside of the city limits, Gethsemane. We soldier in mind of a beneficiary cradled and behind safe perimeter, who shall lead, who shall be inspired by the stories from the front, who shall see others pay the ultimate sacrifice with nothing in return except a simple token donated to the Cause; a simple Gift; a simple extra yardage Push. Or a loss, but still a reminder that good women and men sacrificed. We live inspired by our women and our men on the front lines. We see war in its infancy, and resolve to work together with neighbor and peer. We hasten to that symbolic Gift, the sacramental elements, better to appreciate that shared meal in haste, in Israelites’ Passover haste.

Because our Gospel is as simple as Absolution. It requires nothing more, no memorized rules and stories, but rather these things only insofar as, out of curiosity, our love affair with Forgiveness does make us more interested to check out the inside of a church. To check out a New Testament beauteous, if a product of a different but nonetheless inspired Time. When God walked with Man. When woman and man were healed by a Potent intervention: He intervenes, we salute our overlord Christ, and invite Him to make His home with us.

Because it is a different kind of strength. Because it has hope that we, unhurt, untouched, unforced, are strangely warmed to be New Creations, Creatures of a God who loved us. Because the terms of our surrender bear us in mind as war is now again waged, of what God and Christ will do to these who fight against us: love them. Determine their fate. Insist on educating them as to living sacrifices, kindhearted and dutiful; we live and die for the sake of the enemy as much as for the sake of our inner circle. In this circle we pray simply to Remember, the absolution that energized, that gave us new life, that changed all things and all our decision-making and all our end goals.

Painful sense of self meets rock-bottom Purpose. What we hate in ourselves, about our circumstances, just about “being me”, meets a reminder that these our friends are Gospel friends: they believe the same love-that-overcomes, the same email signature or gracious greeting that implicitly absolves so much. That we do have a core crew who do know each other in Religious Terms, as Christ to one another, as soldiering because life elsewhere, outside the barracks, is too bleak and too weary. It is a failed Uberman, Overmensch, Overman and Overwoman, who accepts now the absolution and soldiers forth in new mind and gifted way forward.